John McCain’s Legacy of Bloodlust & Warmongering

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"New York Times Beats War Drums Against Iran"--ESSENTIAL TO WATCH from @therealnews

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Vijay Prashad and Trita Parsi join Paul Jay to discuss the New York Times article, 'Iran Dominates in Iraq After U.S. 'Handed the Country Over''

Clarifies the confusion around U.S. Iraq/Iran policies.

"New York Times Joins Trump and Saudi Arabia in Targeting Iran"--MUST WATCH by @therealnews

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ARTICLE TURNS THE FACTS ON THEIR HEAD -- [paraphrase of Prof. Sabah Alnasseri]

"GAZA CRISIS, GLOBAL SILENCE"--@TheRealNews

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Tupac Talks Donald Trump & Greed in America in 1992 Interview | MTV News

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+ Come back, Tupac, your country needs you…

                                 --Jeffrey St. Clair at Counterpunch

"House Panel Votes to Debate Post-9/11 Blank Check for War" + NKorea Initially Supportive of Nuclear Weapons Ban

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CALL REPS AND MAKE SURE THIS GETS VOTED ON NOW THAT IT WILL BE PASSED OUT OF APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE

More info (excerpt):

De-Authorize the Use of Military Force

Last Thursday the U.S. House Appropriations Committee unanimously passed an amendment that would — if passed by the full Congress — repeal, after an 8-month delay, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress just after September 11, 2001, and used as a justification for wars ever since.

Also last week, the U.S. Conference of Mayors unanimously passed three resolutions strongly urging Congress to move funding from militarism to human needs, rather than — as President Trump’s budget proposal would do — moving money in the opposite direction. One of these resolutions, introduced by the Mayor of Ithaca, N.Y., closely resembled an initial draft that I had produced, and which people had successfully passed some variation of in several cities.

Some of the points made in the “whereas” clauses of the resolution are rarely acknowledged. This was one:

“WHEREAS, fractions of the proposed military budget could provide free, top-quality education from pre-school through college, end hunger and starvation on earth, convert the U.S. to clean energy, provide clean drinking water everywhere it’s needed on the planet, build fast trains between all major U.S. cities, and double non-military U.S. foreign aid rather than cutting it.”

http://davidswanson.org/de-authorize-the-use-of-military-force/?link_id=21&can_id=578d402d9c6e61fb59940413c1e1d569&source=email-house-panel-votes-to-debate-post-911-blank-check-for-war&email_referrer=house-panel-votes-to-debate-post-911-blank-check-for-war&email_subject=house-panel-votes-to-debate-post-911-blank-check-for-war

Moon of Alabama Corrective to My Recommendation of Max Blumenthal on Syria in this Blog's Prior Entry -- PLEASE READ

Tweet ORIGINAL (which includes jabs at Rania Khalek and and Ben Norton) AT:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/07/syria-a-grayzone-of-opinionated-turncoats.html#more

EXCERPT:

Max Blumenthal is a well connected and known author who has done work on the Palestinian cause from a somewhat leftish perspective. He is also an arrogant and ignorant showman.

Blumenthal currently edits the Alternet Grayzone project. In their recent writings he and his co-writers profess to dislike the al-Qaeda led opposition in Syria. Yet it is exactly the same opposition they earlier vehemently supported.

Yesterday the Real News Network interviewed Blumethal on his recent piece about CNN's al-Qaeda promotion. The headline: Max Blumenthal on How the Media Covers Syria. During the interview Blumenthal laments the failure of progressive media on Syria:

In my opinion, they have abrogated their mission, which should be to challenge mainstream narratives and particularly imperial narratives on issues like Syria. I understand there are massive human rights abuses by the Syrian government, but that's not reason enough to not explore what the West's agenda, the Gulf agenda is for that country, what the consequences are, to actually get into the geopolitical issues. Instead, we've seen Democracy Now propagate generally a regime change narrative.I don't believe they actually have a line on Syria. It's more a fear of actually taking on the official line. I haven't found a single article in the Intercept challenging the regime change line on Syria.

Blumenthal is outraged, OUTRAGED, that "progressive" media peddle the Syria conflict along "the official line".

Yet in 2012 Max Blumenthal resigned as columnist from the Lebanese paper Al Akhbar English because the paper did not write along "the official line". He publicly (also here) smeared and accused his Al Akhbar collegues for taking a cautious or even anti-opposition position on Syria. They challenged the mainstream narratives while Blumenthal, with his resignation and his writing about it, solidly aligned with the imperial project. Back then he himself went along "the official line". Then as now the Real News Network helped him along:

I noticed that it was publishing op-eds by people like Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, who were just openly apologetic of the Assad regime, if not cheerleading Assad as this kind of subaltern freedom fighter leading what she called a front-line resisting state, or Sharmine Narwani, the blogger who was nickel-and-diming civilian casualty counts, [..]
...
This just was really too much for me.
...
My problem was that the opinions at Al-Akhbar's website in support of the Assad regime, which I've identified specifically by Amal Saad-Ghorayeb and Sharmine Narwani and by the editor-in-chief, Ibrahim al-Amin, were not based on any journalistic fieldwork. They're based on poring over YouTube clips, looking at textbooks, or really disturbing citations by Amin of anonymous regime sources, including documents that he cited which he referred to as investigations of people detained for trafficking weapons.

At that time Max Blumenthal was sitting in the U.S. stenographing Syrian opposition propaganda. Yet he accused Sharmine Narwani and other writers living in Lebanon and Syria of lack of journalistic fieldwork and of "poring over YouTube clips". Narwani wasn't amused by his ignorance:

I have made two trips to Syria in the past six months – the first to interview a wide range of domestic opposition figures, most of whom have spent years languishing in Syrian prisons; the second just a week ago, to spend time with the UN Observer team and learn about the changed military landscape throughout the country.No journalistic fieldwork? How would Max know? He has done none on Syria, yet he presumes to condemn the dogged pursuit of truth by others.

Al Akhbar early on recognized the foreign sponsored insurgency in Syria for what it is. Max Blumenthal took the easy route of joining the anti-Syrian propaganda train. Even worse - he publicly smeared the writers at Al Akhbar who were searching for the least harmful solution for Syria.

Now Max Blumenthal has found an outlet that pays him for writing along the very line he condemned when he resigned from Al Akhbar. Nowhere do I find an explanation by Blumenthal for his change of position. No public apology for smearing his former colleagues has been issued by him.

"Max Blumenthal on How the Media Covers Syria"--@maxblumenthal w/aaronmate @therealnews

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BRAVELY POINTING OUT THE COWARDICE OF DEMOCRACY NOW (W/WHOM THEY HAVE BOTH BEEN ASSOCIATED)